Tag Archives: gender

What is the psychological makeup of tomboys? and how do they think? I have said earlier that when you find someone running fast in one direction then you can conclude that he doesn’t want to be in the opposite direction. A girl who is trying to act like a guy is a girl who hates being a girl. Anything that would remind the tomboy of her feminine nature will be unpleasant. That’s why many tomboys love to wear black, prefer jeans to skirts, have guy friends, love gadgets and hate marriage. Some tomboys turn into lesbians just to escape from the feminine role forever.

The famous psychologist Alfred Adler called tomboys girls going through masculine protest. This describes their psychology perfectly because tomboys are girls who are protesting against their gender because they were made to believe that its an inferior one.– http://www.2knowmyself.com/tomboy_psychology

I think I don’t have to point out all of the things that concern me about this article. I have not read any other articles on that website, so I cannot say for sure, whether it is just misconceptions about this one topic, or a website that features many articles with ideas like that, published as “backed by psychology”, as suggested at the very end of the article.

I am going to write about this article from my point of view, the view of a “tomboy”. It will be about how I experience being a “tomboy”, and what it feels like to me to be a woman. I don’t claim this post to be scientific or “backed by psychology”, but it’s backed by my experiences as a tomboy, and those of other tomboys I know.

A girl who is trying to act like a guy is a girl who hates being a girl.

I don’t hate being a girl. I love being a woman, but I also enjoy to behave in a “masculine” way at times. Personally, I actually don’t like to use the terms “masculine” or “feminine”, because I believe that they are very limiting, and based on gender stereotypes. I’d rather say “I like comfortable, baggy clothes.”, instead of saying “I like men’s clothing.”, or “I like my hair short”, instead of being told that I have a “boyish” hair cut. To me, it’s not about being more like a “man”, it’s about being what I feel the most comfortable with. I don’t choose to have short hair to appear more manly, I don’t buy clothes from the men’s department because I want to be a man, I do that because I actually like those things for what they are, not because they resemble “masculinity” in our society. So no, I don’t hate being a girl, despite being a tomboy.

Anything that would remind the tomboy of her feminine nature will be unpleasant.

I like my female body, I like my face which is feminine, I like having boobs. No, it’s not unpleasant to me, to be reminded of my “feminine nature”. (I could however write another paragraph on how I don’t believe there’s a “feminine nature”, which sounds as if there was this dark presence of “femininity” looming above every tomboy since birth, or probably even before that.)

Some tomboys turn into lesbians just to escape from the feminine role forever.

Does it really have to be repeated one more time? People cannot magically turn into a sexual orientation. You either feel that way or you don’t. There are some people who believe sexual orientation is determined by our genes, some think it’s determined by the way we grow up or the experiences we make, and some think it can change anytime. Whatever theory you believe in however, none of these believe that it’s a conscious decision of the person concerned. Apart from that, lesbianism does not take away the “feminine role”, if we are to believe that there is such a thing as the feminine role. To be in a relationship with another woman, in how far does that eradicate the feminine role? Oh of course, how could I forget, there always needs to be a feminine and a masculine role in every relationship, and there can’t be two of either, or none of them.

This describes their psychology perfectly because tomboys are girls who are protesting against their gender because they were made to believe that its an inferior one.

Well do I need to say a lot about that? It’s pretty obvious that this is not true, considering that there are many feminists who would be considered to be tomboys.

All in all, this article focuses too strongly on gender roles, from my point of view. I am not a tomboy because I hate being a woman, and admire man and see them as superior, to the point that I want to be like one. It just happens that a lot of the things that I enjoy are considered “masculine”. They have that label attached to them. If it was considered masculine to wear high-heels, I still wouldn’t like to wear them. And if all of the aspects that make me a tomboy were considered feminine, then yes, I’d be a very feminine person, not a tomboy.

It’s society’s gender stereotypes that make me a tomboy, and not me being a tomboy that actively tries to be more of a man. Although I do like to play with gender roles, but not because I want to be a man, but because I don’t like the idea of the existence of only two genders, and that everybody has to fit into them.